Do Startup Companies Need Community Managers?
You know what little startup companies need these days? They need to hire more people! It may be a frightening thought, but in an increasingly social world - being social is becoming an important full time job.
"Community Manager" is a position being hired for at a good number of large corporations (see Jeremiah Owyang's growing list of people with that kind of job) but what about smaller companies? We asked a number of people what they thought and the following discussion offers some great things to think about, pro and con.
What Is a Community Manager?
A community manager can do many things (see below) but the most succinct definition of the role that we can offer is this. A community manager is someone who communicates with a company's users/customers, development team and executives and other stake holders in order to clarify and amplify the work of all parties. They probably provide customer service, highlight best use-cases of a product, make first contact in some potential business partnerships and increase the public visibility of the company they work for.
True believers can't emphasize the importance of the role enough. John Mark Walker, the Community Manager at CollabNet articulates this perspective well: "I firmly believe that the community manager should be one of the first hires - right after a solid engineering group and before you invest in corporate marketing people."
Not everyone sees it that way, something that causes substantial distress for people in the supply chain who are advocates for the CM role. "Start ups and all companies that exist online need to be looking at a community manager as a salaried position," said Dylan Boyd of eROI. "We have been working with big brands and it kills me when they just give 'social media' to someone that already has 10 other roles...At Omma Social last month in NYC that topic came up asking all the people in the room from Big brands if they had a community manager. 90% of them did not and are still trying to find out how to spec out a job description in order to hire for it."
Dissenters: Community Management Does Not Need to Be a Full Time Job
Others see community management as something that doesn't need to be a full time job. "Community management is essentially a public relationship issue, so whoever picks up that gauntlet is on point for representing their company to the rest of us," consultant Peat Bakke told us. "It doesn't have to be a specific person or a full time job, but it is part of starting and running a business, almost by definition: if you're in business, you're doing community management whether you like it or not."
Some would go so far as to call an explicit community manager position a bad idea in the early days of a startup. Darius A Monsef IV, Executive Editor & Creator, COLOURlovers.com told us he thinks that in the early days founders need to be in the thick of managing their own communities.
Jonas Anderson voiced concern about community managers being caught between loyalties to the company and its users, while being tripped up by employer nondisclosure agreements. (Others though, such as former BBC blog producer Robin Hamman, point out that having a community manager can greatly reduce legal risk when a company engages extensively with its users.)
Startup founder Sachin Agarwal splits his time between community and other work. Though he wishes he had more time for this kind of work, a full timer isn't necessary, he says. "Our contact us page encourages people to ask each other and post on other sites before coming to us - we're happy to help, but I'd wager that other users know how to get the most out of our site better than even we do."
Similarly, Twine's Candice Nobles says after some consideration being given to the position, her company found that their users have been incredibly self-organized and regulating so far.
While those thoughts might seem valid, consultant Dawn Foster emphasized that for some companies - making one person ultimately responsible for community work can be essential. "For startups where community is a critical element of the product or service," she told us, "I think that a community manager should be an early hire. Without a community manager, the frantic pace of the startup environment can mean that the community gets neglected simply because no single person is tasked with being responsible for it. This neglect could result in failure for the startup if the community is critical."
Can Founders Manage Their Communities?
We talk to a lot of CEOs on the phone here at ReadWriteWeb and we'll try to be polite in answering this question. Andraz Tori, CTO at Zemanta answers this question diplomatically. "The [community manager] role can be played by one of the founders early on, but as the project grows you need a person that knows how to listen," he told us. "Founders have a vision and might be a bit stubborn about what their product represents and offers (that's why they are founders). Someone a bit more distanced might be much better community manager since he has a lot more empathy for users and their problems and can relay that to developers and managers. And vice versa."
Pete Burgeson, director of marketing for online marketplace crowdSPRING says that a good community manager can help raise the voice of the users themselves. "We want to be able to build a platform for our community to have a voice, showcase their talent and become as active in speaking for crowdSPRING as we are speaking for ourselves."
Still others believe that users may not want to talk to the founder or a community manager, but some one with tech chops and focus. "I think a startup should put a developer in the community as opposed to a 'community manager'", Rob Diana told us. "Even though the developer may not be as good of a communicator as a marketing guy, there is a different type of understanding of what people want."
What Does A Community Manager Do?
There are many ways that a community manager can benefit a startup company and it often varies from company to company. Eva Schweber, co-founder of CubeSpace says "it depends on the community and what needs to be managed...the style and distractability of the folks in the startup, how they like to collaborate with peers and how they define their peers."
It's a complicated job, but one that can help bring cohesiveness to the life of a company. "Any opportunity to interact with the community forces one to think about the product/feature considerations and ramifications of one choice over another," says Nagaraju Bandaru of SmartWebBlog. "In many ways, community manager is the evangelist for company's products and the voice of the customer in internal discussions. It's critical to react to online discussions with skill, consistency and aptitude; The role is hard to understand from outside but impossible to miss once a startup is in execution mode."
This coherent communication can have business development benefits as well. This seems to us to be one of the most important benefits of the position. Graeme Thickins, VP of Marketing at doapp explains:
"Their world includes the online community that represents both prospective customers/users, as well as strategic partner companies, possible future investors, future employees, and more. Perhaps thinking in terms of a 'listening manager' would help a lot of startup founders better come to grips with what this job is all about."
Carol Leaman from AideRSS says investing in a community manager position has helped her company "gain maximum benefit from our early adopters and growing base of users, as it's a key link between them and our development team. NOT having someone on this full-time would impede our growth and success. We consider ourselves fortunate to have both realized this need early, and to have found an amazing Community Manager to fill the role."
Does that have to be one person in particular? AideRSS's Melanie Baker explains that specialization is as appropriate in this role as in others. "While especially at startups there's a shortage of bodies and it's all hands on deck, not all hands are best suited to all activities," she said. "No one would want me writing code, and I wouldn't necessarily want just anyone talking to frustrated users, for example. It's also totally a hybrid role. My background involves marketing, web, QA, and writing, and I use all of it as a community manager. Someone with a more specialized background can certainly learn what it takes, but might have a hard time wrapping his/her head around the customer service/marketing/business analysis/tech support/software testing/documentation/journalist needs of the role."
"You need someone who understands the fundamental distinction that while you want to grow your user base, a user base does not equal a community," Baker said. "The best success involves growing the former while making every effort to evolve them into the latter. Because communities grow themselves organically a lot more easily than user bases do."
Isn't it ultimately about marketing? Kim Bardakian, Sr. Communications Manager, at the wonderful music site Pandora put it this way: "Pandora just created this position about four months ago and it's been INVALUABLE to our company, in such a short time! It's opened a whole new world of communications for us! Lucia Willow fills that role for us and she's great. With the iPhone/Pandora launch on Friday, the Twitter network and followers were making tons of buzz! It was very exciting.. "
Is Community Management the New PR?
Hutch Carpenter points to an example of community management leading to extensive new media press coverage and saving money on PR.Others see PR evolving towards a community management type of role in this increasingly social world. "I particularly liked the reference to PR as 'public relationships', interjected Kathleen Mazzocco ClearPR. "[That] conveys the directness and transparency of today's new PR. How can it not be given the open conversations going on? That's why Community Managers are the critical new PR position."
PR has long got a bad rap, though, and if PR pros are going to get into social media (they are already here in large quantities) then there may be some challenges to their ability to play a community management role. "The idea of a 'community manager' is a good one as long as that person has the freedom to discuss the negatives as well as the positives of the company's efforts," says Dave Allen of Nemo Design. "If we consider all the aspects of social media as PR 2.0 then I would argue that it is a very important position given that companies would hardly have gone without PR 1.0. I posted a top 10 list of what you might call a 'community manager's' activities might be like here."
(Disclosure: the author has a consulting relationship with Nemo)
Is This Worth Paying For?
Why would a busy little startup spend precious money on this kind of role?
"While a Community Manager isn't the same as a traditional PR role, ideally they should work together," says Meredith from A Little Clarity. "Startups are in a blur; often they're being run by engineers with VCs looking over their shoulders -- they don't know from community managers; so there should be some accountability, and that's the tricky part. Do you measure connections? Responsiveness? Transparent 'public relationships?' Whatever it is that your company will value, get it out there and agree on it, because one thing startups don't always have is time to do it right after getting burned."
You want tangible? Semantic web researcher Yihong Ding will give you tangible! He says that community managers are tasked with tending the most precious asset that many startups have staked their future on - user content.
"As we know, most of the Web 2.0 companies are built upon user generated content," he told us. "Philosophically, User Generated Content is embodied human mind. This embodied mind is generally the fundamental asset for the company. Maintaining a proper community so that users may embody their mind with high quality is thus a central issue for the growth of the company. The duty of community managers is to supervise and maintain the high-quality production of the fundamental mind asset used by the company. Therefore, I would say that community manager is a critical job title for most of the Web 2.0 companies."
We agree with Yihong. User data and community content are the foundation that web 2.0 style innovation and company valuations rest on. Failing to focus meaningfully on tending those assets is a foolish choice.
Thanks to everyone who participated in this conversation. We hope readers will contribute their thoughts in comments below.
CC photo by Flickr user ItzaFineDay.
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I've just read your enormous post and I still don't really know what a community manager is. I challenge you in one sentence, using plain English to explain what a community manager is.
Depends on how far along that startup is...
Posted by: l0ckergn0me
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July 15, 2008 7:56 PM
ok, will do -coming up as soon as I'm off the phone
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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July 15, 2008 7:58 PM
Good post... I agree with l0ckergn0me: it's about scope and awesomeness. Either of those gets large and the ability to adequately engage and speak to a community diminishes.
Posted by: Clay Newton
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July 15, 2008 8:02 PM
Charlie, here's one sentence. A community manager is someone who communicates with a company's users/customers, development team and executives and other stake holders in order to amplify the work of all parties. Second sentence, just in case you'd like it: They probably provide customer service, highlight best use-cases of a product, make first contact in some potential business partnerships and increase the public visibility of the company they work for. Thanks, by the way Charlie, I've added to post.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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July 15, 2008 8:05 PM
Thanks a lot!
I didn't really understand what a community manager did, then I hired a really good one. I think its a bit like other forms of PR & marketing - soft, often intangible, full of bullsh!t arstists, but when you see it done well.....it all makes sense.
A community manager monitors the feedback loop between users and developers and makes sure information is flowing back & forth and that there are no leaks.
I kind of think of it like that guy in Office Space:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4OvQIGDg4I
Kevin, that video was perfect!
We have known this at Microsoft ever since we started the internet!
Sounds like my perfect job :) Anyone hiring?!
Great post! We just brought on a part time community manager to help us get started!
Well said. I'm gonna start sending people the link to this article every time someone asks me what I do! :)
The general impression I get from my conversations is that most people don't know what a community manager is, and more importantly, that they need one. How would one go about showing/informing someone they need a CM?
Love the post! I am one of them and its great fun job managing the developer community at Daylife.
vineet
Managing a community is like herding cats. You're not going to manage members of the community, and thinking they can be treated like trees for harvesting is just a sackful of fertilizer. Instead, think of having people in your organization who manage what Tara Hunt calls INreach programs. Manage your organization to meet the community's needs, and you'll yield results.
http://www.horsepigcow.com/2007/09/13/how-to-make-a-gabillion-dollars-with-community-marketingor-something-to-that-effect/ (Text for slide 89).
http://xicanista.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html (Item #6)
I believe that Marshall has described my job at Nemo Design....
wow, this article was way too long. and no poll?
I am in the hire a community manager as soon as you can camp.
The problem with community management is that it is long term vital to your business but short term it can drop to the bottom of the list. Unless someone is committed to it by the time you get through your list you might have no community left to manage!
(We've just hired a community manager)
Hi Marshall. A timely post indeed. It will help many startups identify this need in these times of information overload, especially the web based startups. Also, one important task of the community manager would include tracking the blogosphere for user discussions (encouraging/discouraging)about the product/service and possibly, tracking the competitors.
Incredible and insightful post especially as it relates to startups. I agree that a community manager is exactly what so many smaller companies need. Build the community and then bring PR to support the effort.
Thanks for the piece. I definitely plan share with clients.
Hi Marshall,
Thank you for the sharing. As always, you have very well discussed a complicated but also timely topic. It is always my pleasure to watch your post.
Yihong
This is how I explain the vague and somewhat silly title of "community manager" to my mom: you're half user and half team member, and you smooth out the relationship between those sides by acting as something of a mediator. You tell the users what the team is saying (by answering support emails, for example) and you tell the team what the users are saying (you file bugs and help prioritize new features, among other things).
Great post! I interpret the role as a mash-up between an analyst, an evangelist, an all-parties (end-user to CEO) ombudsman and communicator, with a dash of strategist to it.
A web based startup may benefit from hiring a part time CM in order to setup the architecture needed to listen to the community and communicate with it. In the mid-term perspective, once the services are in place, I'm certain adding a full-time CM to the team will be wise.
I like the PR-angle of it as well and the work of the PR practicioner as a two-way communicator, internal to external and vice versa.
J. Owyang's post http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/03/26/understanding-the-technology-evangelist-role-a-few-of-my-favorite-folks/ and the leads from that entry gave a deeper understanding of it all.
Great post!
I really got to understand this community manager role when I got to meet one in real life (O'Reilly's Jannetti Chon). In her case, she's also involved with content management - e.g. the core business fuel - and she totaly convinced me how this role was crucial for any company (either a startup or an established company).
Hope there will be some followup for this post, with more testimonies :)
Marshall - interesting post I guess I have two conflicting viewpoints. While I appreciate your comments about founders/CEO's being a little too "stubborn" to be effective in the role, sometimes the alternative is a hire who has no real understanding or passion of/for the product and vision.
There's nothing worse than talking to a CM that's no more than a PR person (and we all know how uninformed PR people can sometimes be). I guess it's all about horses for courses and ensuring all involved understand the product and more importantly the business itself
Ben Kepes: Uninformed PR guy is surely worse alternative than founder being community manager himself.
You still need someone that was with a product early on. Our community manager has sociology & user experience background, but was first turned into developer, because we needed developers at the time. When we got some other developers he was able to go into community management role. That is great since he knows the product inside out.
Andraz Tori, Zemanta
As usual, a very good post.
What is essential is the "independence" of the CM that is also the basic difference with PR.
On the time scale, I would suggest:
There is necessity for a CM when users start discussing publicly the pro and con of the product/service but not in the company own media.
Great post, Marshall. But to be honest I am a little bit concerned about this whole 'community manager' business. I’m afraid it will become another fad like employing a company blogger, or worse Twitterer, or even social media expert.
At the end of the day, it’s all about listening and participation, therefore managing a community cannot be a one-person job. It's a big job so dissecting it into smaller chunks makes more sense. I see it as everyone’s responsibility, whether it’s a CEO or a developer, especially in a start-up.
Great article!
My 2 cents: At the very beginning, when the startup consists only of founders you can select CM out of them. If you don't have a person that can pull it (meaning someone with marketing, PR, BDM skills) your startup is going to be in trouble anyway - it means you have just engineers on the team.
Another issue: CM is not a PR2.0, it's CRM 2.0 - back in the days CRM was about getting input from one customer, processing it and giving output. Now, as customers sort of manage themselves in a group (thus forming communities) you have to manage community, not single customers. And as business and products are becoming more interactive (towards customers) it's a Read/Write relationship - customers are changing businesses (by proposing features, blocking canceling of some, criticizing and praising).
Whether or not a start-up needs a community manager is an excellent question--esp. as companies struggle with how much social media they should be using. Having done community management/development a time or two, whether a startup has one definitely depends on the start-up. Can the start-up get by with just a blog, where the content creator is engaged in the comments? Do they really need a Twitter account if their customers might not be there (and, believe me, a whole lot of people aren't even on Twitter)? When the types of social media needed by a business are figured out, then they can figure out if they need a community manager, and if that community manager should be part-time or full-time....
But--if the start-up is clueless about what's needed in social media, a consultant who can manage community for them for awhile could also work. The consultant can help them get an idea on what the start-up needs first with social media so they're not overloaded and stressed about keeping up with everything, then fill in on the management, if that's part of a services package. As things grow, the consultant can, and probably should, train someone internally or help find a dedicated comm. mgr. for the amt of time necessary to do the job.
As for P.R. people handling community...yikes! I've seen that one backfire a bit. Comm. mgt. is a task better suited to folks who know how to listen and respond, not just dole out the company message.
I said a long time ago I would only leave freelancing if my dream job came along. That is, a job incorporating blogging with social networking and talking with people all day. This happened a month ago when I was hired by BlogTalkRadio to be their Community Manager.
I think whether or not a business needs a full time CM all depends on the company. At BTR, we have thousands of radio shows, thousands of hosts and thousands of listeners. That's a lot of people to bring together. It only makes sense to bring a full time CM on board.
In addition to handling the blog, my job is to promote the segments, promote BTR, promote the hosts and bring the community together. I listen to hosts and offer tips for bringing traffic to their segments. I talk with listeners to learn how to make their BTR experience more user friendly and I help the BTR team to find solutions benefiting everyone involved. I also encourage bloggers to start their own radio shows, which is as simple as owning a phone.
Do all businesses need a CM? I'm not sure. I think any company with a heavy web presence would do well to have someone to spread the word and find out what makes their audience or client base happy. CM's establish personal relationships and are more invested in the product or service than your usual publicist for hire. Plus we know the social networks, we know the web and we know the bloggers. BlogTalkRadio wouldn't have hired me if I was just Joe off the street- being a problogger and being able to speak with other bloggers put me ahead of the other candidates.
I don't know that all businesses need CMs. For businesses with a heavy web presence however, it's in their best interest to at least look into it.
A "Product Evangelist" may be a lot more important than a "Community Manager," especially for a start-up.
The way "Community Manager" is defined is this post, it's more like a "Relationship Manager." But this is VERY different than the type of role Guy Kawasaki had at Apple.
This is a great post! As a community manager, I often find that people are unfamiliar with the role someone like me plays in a startup. As others have said above me, it's very much a mediation job, where you listen to the wishes of your users, the abilities of your dev team, and the vision of your founders and then try to strike a balance between them to deliver the best possible product. I am big ears with a smile!
Something important that is very important yet often overlooked in my experience:
Expect your CM not just to socialize/evangelize, but to show up with feature requests and bug reports. Give them the ability to be heard and considered. CM is a social role, yes, but the point of those social interactions is to collect valuable feedback and translate it into actions. On the flipside, a good CM takes the time to understand the dev team's priorities and timelines and works WITH them to find the best ways to implement new features.
Thanks again for a great article (and the great comments!)
Sure, that sounds like a great plan - Have your business model be completely dependant on monitizing the user/ community contributed content, then have no one managing it.
Smart! Sounds like a recipe for success! I know that's how friendster was run, and we all know how well they are doing!
Every last MSN page has a manager!
Community managers in my mind need to be perm. full-time employees. You don't want someone evangelising your products and talking to customers for only a couple of months and then they go off to another company. Make the committment and hire the person.
Great post and an ideal position for someone like me! My background is in law, public policy, sales, business and technology. And I think 'Community Manager' really is akin to the first sales call where you don't try to sell anything, just figure out what the customer needs. In this 'conversation' with the end-user, if the product you represent is what they need - job done. If it is not, you have the opportunity to tweak the product and return for another 'conversation'. Conversations (not selling) build trust, which builds community, which builds companies.
In our startup we introduced the position of Community Evangelist last week. We believe it is important to communicate with your community of users, and to have this extra person to represent your startup, no matter the size of your business.
Posted by: Ashraf Mansoor
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July 16, 2008 8:24 AM
I've always described myself as the "Chief Communicator", in that it's my job to communicate, and ensure effective communications, between all of the different groups and people that are involved in the success of the company, from engineers to users to executives to customers. I guess I should call myself a community manager instead.
With the new and growing social media sites, if a community manager manages your name and the information being passed onto these communities about your business then they should be able to show an increase in sales for your business.
If this is the case then it could be a new department instead of just a new employee. I’ll hire people all day if each one is able to show an increase in the bottom line.
Fantastic post and an issue we talk about all the time at the site I work at. Personally, I think community managers are CRUCIAL to success. Two of my favorite folks that do this are Blake Whitman at Vimeo and, even though its not his official position, Ryan Brown at famegame.
All B2C startups should have a community manager. The community is already talking to each other and that conversation is important. The role is multiple jobs, a combination of customer service, proactive PR, and account management which puts them in a unique position to understand how a product/service is being used and can be improved.
in concurrence with the others - great post!
My definition of a community manager is simply: A community manager is the voice of the company externally and the voice of the customers internally. The value lies in the community manager serving as a hub & having the ability to personally connect with the customers (humanize the company), & serving with all departments internally (development, PR, marketiing, customer service, tech support, etc).
We're in the camp of "yes you need a community manager". In fact we just hired our "Chief Mom Officer"...that's our version of the community manager for our baby area. The full time vs part time is more a function of business needs.
One of the things we look at when hiring community managers is that we look at their passion and presence in the community we're targeting first and than see if there is a good match for the role. The last hire actually happened over Twitter DMs!
I look at community managers as the faces on the corporation. People don't interact with companies, they interact with people who work at companies. And these people have personalities (hopefully).
I manage Intel's Open Port, a site that congregates several technical communities. Each community, organized by different product segments like PCs or Servers, is managed by a technical expert who can interact on the same level with their community. Community members in this sense do not want marketing talking heads managing their communities, but real engineers they can connect with and ask questions.
Since it is the person that counts, one of the greatest challenges I believe is finding a dynamic enough personality to engage your community; someone who is also technical enough to speak on the same level as the community. In essence, he or she needs some level of street cred.
As a community manager myself (at a startup) I've struggled a bit with the job description since I wasn't initially given one... however, my position has really grown/developed over the past year and I feel that I'm now able to do a proper job of it, as well as explain exactly what I do.
Here are a few of the things I handle:
- communication with our users
(this includes answering feedback@ and info@ emails, as well as direct emails, phone calls, faxes and messages on our various social media accounts).
- managing release forms and tax forms
(we work with online and offline video, so it's important that these are in order)
- recruitment of new users
- advising upper management of users' concerns and thoughts, as well as suggesting improvements to our brand
- being a general go-between from the users to the tech department to the financial department to the CEO and VP.
I also handle some of our user-side PR materials for events and conferences, and attend as one of the faces of our company.
Hope this helps a bit!
-Liza
We're admittedly not a commercial startup (we're an NPO) but its become apparent that for our kind of organization that this kind of position is crucial. We have a lot of things we do that could be seen as more traditional products - I'm not worried about them as much. We see the role of the community manager is to actually foster community, to bring these people together. This might users for these more conventional 'products' (which is likely to be the focus for a new startup with one product)..
But there is also community -as- product. A lot of the ideas we have are simple ones like, "wouldn't it be valuable if we had a certain group of people talking about a certain thing in a certain way." In this case the role of the community manager is about actually forming this community, keeping it healthy and valuable for all of the constituents. It's some of the key elements of Liza's comments, but replace users with people.
For us these people might be academics, industry leaders or even students. For a commercial entity this is just as important, but it might be easier to overlook. Someone who buys a product or signs on for a service is already invested in someway, and they could be an active part of a community -around- that product. A really great community manager could bring other people in to that community and expand it, focus the direction and make it a community around the things that are -behind- that product.
At the SEED conference this June, Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine TV gave an amazing talk about community and community building. His basic premise was that a community manager of some sort is the most important element to a successful web property. I wish they would release the audio from that conference, several outstanding speakers.
Great post Marshall! Definitely hit home because I am a community manager at my startup.
I love my job because I spend time on both sides of the fence. I know our business model and our goals as a company, but I also get where our users are coming from because they're communicating with me on a daily basis.
Sometimes it's tough to maintain this sort of personal relationship with your customers because so many entrepreneurs are looking at the big picture. What I do is make sure everyday needs are met and show our community that we really care about them.
One potential roadblock for people in my profession is scalability. Where does a community manager go next? If you don't have that figured out, you're going to get stuck.
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